WEBVTT 00:00.000 --> 00:14.040 This is Hacker Public Radio Episode 4,134 for Thursday the 18th of January 2024. 00:14.040 --> 00:18.120 Today's show is entitled Sleep Tips. 00:18.120 --> 00:22.720 It is hosted by Operator and is about 11 minutes long. 00:22.720 --> 00:25.560 It carries an explicit flag. 00:25.560 --> 00:40.920 This summary is, go with Operator on his journey to Sleepy Town. 00:40.920 --> 00:44.160 You are listening to a show from the Reserve queue. 00:44.160 --> 00:49.200 We are airing it now because we had free slots that were not filled. 00:49.200 --> 00:55.080 This is a community project that needs listeners to contribute shows in order to survive. 00:55.080 --> 00:58.080 Please consider recording a show for Hacker Public Radio. 00:58.080 --> 01:06.680 Hello everyone, I am Olga Duna of the City of Hacker Public Radio with your host, Operator. 01:06.680 --> 01:13.640 So today I am going to be speaking about Sleep in Sleep Optimization. 01:13.640 --> 01:18.760 While back probably, I want to say it's been probably a 10 year saga of having issues and 01:18.760 --> 01:25.640 difficulty sleeping and trying to bring you on that journey to where I'm at today. 01:25.640 --> 01:32.720 So I think about probably 10 years ago, 11 years ago, I was doing consulting, traveling 01:32.720 --> 01:40.880 a fair amount, staying up odd hours or work, doing after hours testing for security and 01:40.880 --> 01:44.400 organizations and doing different time zones. 01:44.400 --> 01:49.840 And I think that had some to do with it, of why I had issues sleeping. 01:49.840 --> 01:59.000 I also think, mainly it's around drinking lots of alcohol and drinking and causing that 01:59.000 --> 02:04.360 part and then again stress with work or work life balance type of deal. 02:04.360 --> 02:11.600 So I started having a problem probably back, like I said, 10 years ago, I would have this 02:11.600 --> 02:17.680 need to just wake up and my wife called it witching hours like 3 o'clock and the more you 02:17.680 --> 02:23.920 talk to people, the more you realize that not a lot of people get the right amount of sleep 02:23.920 --> 02:26.720 and it gets worse in different regions. 02:26.720 --> 02:33.720 But for me, I started to realize that I was waking up around 3 or 4 o'clock and then from 02:33.720 --> 02:39.840 then on it was more just kind of flopping around and I remember seeing commercials late 02:39.840 --> 02:51.640 at 9 o'clock, and then I realized I actually had it almost like the sensation of threats 02:51.640 --> 02:58.240 almost where you have the sensation of if you have to scratch your nose or something like 02:58.240 --> 03:00.320 that, but you can't scratch it. 03:00.320 --> 03:03.280 So you have to constantly move your legs. 03:03.280 --> 03:09.320 It's an anxiety kind of feeling or if you've ever been antsy that same kind of thing. 03:09.440 --> 03:10.440 It won't go away. 03:10.440 --> 03:17.520 You can do exercises, some people say the bicycles were work, for me it was kind of holding 03:17.520 --> 03:25.800 my legs up for a long period of time and using my muscles, the leg muscles and trying 03:25.800 --> 03:28.600 to tire them out and it would usually give me some relief for a while. 03:28.600 --> 03:35.040 So that ran for about, I want to say a year or two, on and off, having issues sleep being 03:35.040 --> 03:40.200 out with sometimes draining, to help sleep, that would make things kind of worse, eventually 03:40.200 --> 03:45.920 ended up talking to my doctor, my doctor of course just gave me pills, which was sleeping 03:45.920 --> 03:46.920 pill. 03:46.920 --> 03:52.840 It wasn't ambient, I'm quite yet, it was something else as I was ever, it was like 03:52.840 --> 03:55.160 a tranquilizer essentially. 03:55.160 --> 03:56.160 That didn't really do much. 03:56.160 --> 04:01.160 He gave me Gavipentin, like a 500 milligram Gavipentin, that didn't do much. 04:01.160 --> 04:05.320 He told me to up the Gavipentin, I didn't feel great with that and I tried it, didn't 04:05.320 --> 04:09.820 help, tried Benadryl, tried every kind of over the counter thing, I tried showers, 04:09.820 --> 04:16.840 I tried baths, I tried, you know, bar to soap, but the foot of your bed, milk exercise 04:16.840 --> 04:17.840 before exercise. 04:17.840 --> 04:21.440 After I tried every single possible combination of anything, the only thing that seemed 04:21.440 --> 04:26.640 to make it worse was drinking, a fair amount, and or staying up irregular hours and not 04:26.640 --> 04:30.360 having that normal cadence. 04:30.360 --> 04:37.240 So fast word, I ended up taking a break from all of that because I couldn't sleep anyways 04:37.240 --> 04:43.040 and then about a year after that, I came back and said, you know, I'm still having issues 04:43.040 --> 04:44.920 and he put me on ambient. 04:44.920 --> 04:52.360 That seemed to kind of work for about a year and realized it was kind of not really helping 04:52.360 --> 05:00.000 me, it would kind of make me forgive that I had a whole night, and it would kind of 05:00.000 --> 05:03.680 kind of knock me out. 05:03.680 --> 05:07.840 And I would have date and you hear people about ambient and they don't want to touch it 05:07.840 --> 05:11.440 because you essentially date trip, you'll wake up in the middle of the night and you'll 05:11.440 --> 05:16.080 do something crazy and what I would do is if I had problem sleeping, wake up in the middle 05:16.080 --> 05:20.480 of the night and I would down like, I'll even drink wine and I would down like a little 05:20.480 --> 05:27.400 bottle of like mini wine or something or just wake up and, you know, take a few shots 05:27.440 --> 05:31.120 of something or something and then go to sleep or I would wake up and have a full 05:31.120 --> 05:34.040 long conversation with my wife or something. 05:34.040 --> 05:39.400 So that got to be kind of, you know, I never did anything dangerous necessarily, some people 05:39.400 --> 05:44.120 talk about driving or doing crazy things and I never did anything like that, but I realized 05:44.120 --> 05:48.160 it's like, you know, after I woke up on morning and there was like, you know, a mini 05:48.160 --> 05:53.000 bottle of wine next to my office because I sleep in the office because I'd flop around. 05:53.000 --> 05:56.360 So of course you can't sleep with another prudent partner if you're flopping around 05:56.520 --> 06:00.840 night so I'd sleep in the other room and yeah, when I woke up and there was like a, you know, 06:00.840 --> 06:06.520 a bottle of, you know, mini wine next to my bed, I realized, okay, this is not great. 06:07.400 --> 06:13.480 I think I took a break from ambient and I tried my routine, which is, you know, no, no sugars or 06:13.480 --> 06:21.080 bed, nothing, no stimulants before bed, being regular about my sleep, regular exercise, not 06:21.160 --> 06:26.280 drinking, not doing fake sugars, all that stuff seemed to kind of help. 06:26.280 --> 06:30.040 I don't know about the fake sugar, but I know caffeine, what calls me issues. 06:31.080 --> 06:37.880 So I quit all that and I tried anything that would, you know, induce those types of reactions 06:37.880 --> 06:44.440 to flopping around. I would, I would kill. But for me, eventually kind of would get it 06:44.440 --> 06:47.880 and check for a while and then it would kind of come back and it was almost season the way it would 06:47.960 --> 06:54.680 come back. So it I realized, you know, they came back with a vengeance and I was talking 06:54.680 --> 06:59.720 the neighbors down the street and they said, they suggested two things, some earpacks and one of 06:59.720 --> 07:08.600 the things, one of them is a primary care, I think, and the other one was a pharmacist. So they're 07:08.600 --> 07:15.880 just like, well, take this drug and I had been pretty steady from then. I actually before that, 07:15.960 --> 07:22.280 there was a time where I evaped T.H.C. and that worked like a truck. It would, you know, 07:22.280 --> 07:27.800 I would just do one little vape before I went to sleep and it would knock me out forever. As long 07:27.800 --> 07:32.600 as I wanted to sleep, I could sleep and it wasn't a groggy seat. It was a comfortable, you know, 07:32.600 --> 07:38.760 I slept like I was supposed to sleep. So that can work for a lot of people too. Not your 07:39.720 --> 07:46.440 CBD oil. I did try that. I tried legit CBD oil. You know, the things like that, but nothing worked 07:46.440 --> 07:53.720 like a regular like T.H.C. card. So that's one option, but for me later on, I started to still wake 07:53.720 --> 08:00.520 up in the middle of the night and had the RLS symptoms. Right? And then I'd have to vape again. 08:00.520 --> 08:05.240 And then I realized, okay, well, you know, I'm kind of self-medicating. It's working and it worked 08:05.240 --> 08:11.000 for about a year, but then I wake up and kind of start to build tolerance to it. And like any 08:11.000 --> 08:17.480 drug you'll sometimes most of the time end up building some kind of tolerance to it. So I switched to 08:17.480 --> 08:23.080 the mirror packs and I'm taking the lowest dose of mirror packs and that is helping me sleep a lot 08:23.080 --> 08:29.880 and I'm trying to stay normal with my exercise, sleeping habits are a big part of it. Not drinking 08:30.120 --> 08:36.520 kind of at all. And if I do drink, I'll drink a little bit or I'll drink a line where I won't 08:36.520 --> 08:42.120 drink at all because it's not really worth it to chance it for me to drink a little bit and then go to sleep 08:42.120 --> 08:47.320 and then usually I'm fine like the first day or two and for whatever reason if I have like two or three 08:47.320 --> 08:52.280 drinks, I'll be fine that night, but the next night it will catch up with me or the night 08:52.280 --> 08:57.240 after that it will catch up with me. So I'll have problem sleeping, you know, a couple of days after 08:57.320 --> 09:04.520 for whatever reason. They also talk about the skinny rhythm so I try to wake up and go outside 09:05.240 --> 09:13.240 sit out front with the natural light and drink my tea and listen to my podcast. So having that 09:13.240 --> 09:19.800 regular cadence of the skinny rhythm thing helps. I'm hoping, but here recently I've been 09:20.600 --> 09:26.760 kind of still waking up a little bit at night, but more because of stress because some things 09:26.760 --> 09:33.800 have changed at work in home so I think that's changed but some things have lifted in that space. 09:33.800 --> 09:39.480 So I think I'm at a relatively low stress level in general, but a lot of times people can't sleep 09:39.480 --> 09:45.080 because of stress. Reducing your stress is probably the biggest thing you can do as far as I can tell 09:46.520 --> 09:50.920 and or, you know, get a second opinion, get a third opinion. Keep trying, don't give up 09:51.880 --> 09:58.120 like anything any ailment that you have, get a second opinion. But anyways, I hope that didn't 09:58.120 --> 10:04.280 put y'all to sleep and if it did and you were trying to sleep, then great. But, you know, get 10:04.280 --> 10:11.160 second opinions, ask around, try something else, don't give up, don't live with not sleep. 10:11.160 --> 10:16.280 If you have to, you know, vape for a year or vape for how long or if you have to, you know, 10:16.360 --> 10:21.880 if you have to take ambient for however long just to get you some sleep for a mile until you 10:21.880 --> 10:26.040 can figure out what works for you, right? Medication, the right balance of exercise, diet, 10:26.600 --> 10:33.320 whatever, um, that, that, that works. It's not, it didn't all be y'all. If someone, you know, 10:33.320 --> 10:37.720 there's a lot of pushback around, you know, taking a pill or taking a medication for something. 10:37.720 --> 10:42.600 Um, it doesn't have to be the solution, right? You can take a medication for a short period of time 10:43.400 --> 10:48.360 and it'll be relatively okay. I mean, honestly, everything causes cancer anyway. So, you know, 10:48.360 --> 10:51.880 if you're going to complain that, oh, you're on ambient, oh, we all don't think that stuff. 10:51.880 --> 10:58.440 Or that's bad. Or whatever the drug is, it's not a lifelong thing. Um, your, you might be, 10:59.560 --> 11:05.240 you might be a, you know, left with some kind of disposition, some sort forever and have to 11:05.240 --> 11:09.240 take some kind of medication. Um, but in general, there's usually something you can, 11:10.200 --> 11:16.040 a tutor back and forth, try it. You can try one drug for some certain amount of time and try another drug 11:16.040 --> 11:19.160 and switch back and forth and you build tolerances and stuff. Um, anyways, 11:20.040 --> 11:25.720 hope that helps out, um, you know, stay vigilant, get some sleep, focus on, 11:26.920 --> 11:33.320 good practices, good hygiene, um, get exercise. That's a big one. Um, walk out, walk, walk, walk. 11:33.320 --> 11:36.840 At least once a day, I walk up and down the stairs. They're air conditioned here at the office 11:37.800 --> 11:43.400 and I walk with my spouse, um, you know, around noon now, because it's not tight, 11:43.400 --> 11:48.360 but when it gets hot, I would walk. We would walk earlier in the morning. So anyways, 11:48.360 --> 11:53.000 I hope that helps out and, uh, a lot of it goes. 11:59.400 --> 12:04.280 You have been listening to Hecker Public Radio at Hecker Public Radio.org. 12:04.280 --> 12:08.520 Today's show was contributed by a HBR this night like yourself, 12:08.520 --> 12:15.960 if you ever thought of recording podcast, you click on our contribution to find out how easy it means. 12:15.960 --> 12:21.400 Hosting for HBR has been kindly provided by an onsthost.com, 12:21.400 --> 12:27.800 the internet archive and our synced.net. On the satellite stages, today's show is released on 12:27.800 --> 12:36.760 our creative comments, attribution for going to international license.